The Greater Darkness

by Eldon Murphy

Geoffrey turned his head enough to see Imastious once again sitting on the couch. Geoffrey's katana gleamed darkly on the floor where it had apparently fallen not too far away. He shuddered at the memory of the way his weapon had refused to strike, but by the time he'd tried to use it he'd been pretty oxygen-deprived. The logical explanation was that he'd just been too far gone to lift it. Any other cause would border on the supernatural.

  "Knowing you, and that obstinate streak you are sometimes possessed of, you're probably digging in, preparing to resist to the death because none of this was your idea. This simply won't do. I think it's time to show you that there are much worse things than simply dying."

  Moving with a languid grace that seemed out of place on someone so emaciated, Imastious stood and walked over to Geoffrey with a look of cruel anticipation foremost on his face. A cold hand grasped the younger man's shoulder and pulled him around to where he could see the other side of the room.

  "I trust you recognize her?"

  Once again his mind rebelled at what he was seeing. It wasn't possible that Imastious had found the woman he'd saved just a few nights before. Imastious shouldn't even have known about the attempted mugging, let alone have had the ability to track one anonymous person down among the millions that lived on the island.

  Try as he might to deny it, the terrified dark brown eyes staring at Geoffrey were the same ones he remembered. Underneath all of the terror, blood and bruises, the gentle face that had shown so much concern for Geoffrey was still very much the same.

  "What, no protestations that you don't know her, that she should be freed? I'm favorably impressed, my son. That being the case, let's get started on the work at hand."

  Geoffrey would have vocally denied knowing the woman, but his mind hadn't yet finished tracing down the chain of logic that would have led him to do so.

  It wasn't until Imastious pulled a thin blade from his sleeve that Geoffrey realized the bound figure before him was bleeding in several places.

  "You see, my son, not only do you live on my sufferance, but all those you would try to help out of some misguided sense of nobility will also die should I wish it."

  The terror in the poor woman's eyes had reached heights that it seemed no sane mind could withstand. Geoffrey felt waves of fear clawing at him from the trembling woman, and it suddenly struck home fully that Imastious had been torturing her, probably for hours, while he waited for Geoffrey to return.

  What followed had the blurry feeling of a dream, of something that had been dredged up out of the darkest corner of Geoffrey's subconscious. Yet at no point did he really believe it was anything other than real. The sense that the poor woman's emotions were tangible never went away. Instead it intensified to the point where, even when he closed his eyes in shame, Geoffrey was still able to feel the knife cutting into her dark skin.

  Imastious paused whenever it seemed his subject could take no more, allowing her time to calm down slightly before returning to his grisly work. Every time Geoffrey became sure the woman's mind would shatter, Imastious interjected one of his breaks, stringing the spectacle on.

  Geoffrey thought that nothing could be worse than what he was seeing, until Imastious bent down and licked the blood from the nearly lifeless body before him. As disgusting as that was, even more disgusting was the sudden spike of hunger that shot through Geoffrey. It had to be a sick byproduct of what Geoffrey had just gone through; he refused to believe he was as far gone as Imastious apparently was.

  When the poor woman finally expired from blood loss a couple of hours later, Imastious had well and truly made his point.

  "You see? There really are things worse than death. If you continue to fail, I won't hesitate to visit them on anyone who means even the slightest thing to you."

  Geoffrey wasn't surprised when Imastious, blade in hand, turned toward him and began inflicting the same treatment on him that the old man had been inflicting, just moments before, on the Latina.

  The pain that followed was very real, but Geoffrey welcomed it, and fresh tears poured down his face once Imastious finally stopped. There truly were worse things than dying, and Geoffrey was pretty sure that living as the kind of sick monster that longed to kill innocents so he could lap up their blood was one of them.

  Chapter 4

  When Geoffrey next awoke, the setting sun provided just enough light to illuminate the pale, unbroken expanse of skin on Geoffrey's chest. It was nearly enough to convince him he'd somehow imagined being tortured for hours. Turning the lights on proved otherwise.

  His sheets were drenched in unimaginable amounts of dried blood. Horrified, Geoffrey turned away only to find additional evidence that everything had happened just as he remembered it. The results of Imastious' handiwork left in the corner made him gag and bury his face in hands that were every bit as bloodstained as they had been the night before.

  How long had he been asleep? Even if he'd somehow been asleep long enough to heal from the damage he'd remembered Imastious doing to him, there would have still been scars. He wanted to dismiss everything that had happened as some kind of vivid, extended nightmare, but the body in the corner was indisputable proof that at least some of it had been terribly real.

  Geoffrey felt a rising sense of terror as he realized that he couldn't trust his mind. He didn't know how Imastious was doing it--maybe with some kind of memory-distorting drug--but he had to assume it had been at least partially staged.

  The sound of voices in the hall sent Geoffrey into a near panic. He knew it would only be a matter of time until someone started looking for the Latina. If she were found in Geoffrey's apartment, they'd lock him up. The decision to leave the apartment brought with it a strange pocket of calm that allowed Geoffrey to start planning ahead. He needed a shower, new clothes, and a way out of the city.

  During the trip to the bus stop, Geoffrey couldn't escape the feeling that everyone he passed was watching him. It seemed as if everyone who looked at him knew his guilt. The stress of trying to watch for people following him, without looking completely paranoid, sent him into shakes before he'd even made it halfway. He held on to what was left of his composure by remembering that he just needed to keep himself together for a few more blocks. After that, he would board a bus and disappear into some small town where nobody would ever link him to anything.

  While still a block from the bus station, Geoffrey heard sirens and his already nauseated stomach dropped. There wasn't just one police car outside the bus station; there were three. A quartet of officers were watching each passenger board, obvious in their scrutiny of the buses and the would-be passengers.

  A tiny rational part of Geoffrey's mind couldn't believe the police could possibly have discovered the corpse in his apartment so quickly, but the sensation that he was in great danger was so strong that his vision started to tunnel. Somehow they knew, and if he got close enough to them, they'd recognize him.

  Geoffrey turned into a side street as calmly as he was able, and then as soon as he was out of sight broke into a stumbling run. People really were looking at him now, but it no longer mattered. Nothing mattered as much as getting away from the bus station, away from the cops who would surely shoot him on sight.

  By the time rational thought returned, Geoffrey was in Spanish Harlem, and his obvious panic was starting to draw hostile stares from the few people still walking the streets at such a late hour. A half-glimpsed sign pointing to a nearby subway entrance represented his best hope of security. Down in the darkness there would be somewhere to hide. Maybe not indefinitely, but at least long enough for him to think of another way out of the city. One that the police wouldn't be watching.

  The subway platform was deserted, but Geoffrey still felt incredibly self-conscious as he climbed down onto the tracks, carefully avoiding the lethal third rail.

  A few short steps brought Geoffrey into the welcoming darkness, calming him slightly as he realized that he'd made it to a form of safety. For the next half hour, Geoffrey's only compani
ons were the rats he could barely hear scurrying across the tracks.

  As acute as Geoffrey's night vision was, he still nearly missed the faint outline of the door to the service tunnels. The doorknob didn't turn, but someone had forced the lock so that the door swung freely open when pushed.

  The area behind the door was even blacker than the subway tunnel. Geoffrey crept very cautiously, hands outstretched in an effort to detect any obstacles. Following the wall for thirty or forty paces brought Geoffrey around two corners. As he found a third, he noticed that it was getting brighter.

  Walking more quickly as the visibility improved, Geoffrey realized that he'd found some kind of central hub from which a number of service corridors branched out to provide access for this portion of the subway tunnels. By the look of the trash all over the floor and the graffiti on the walls, he wasn't the first person to find his way down there, but it did have the benefit of still having lighting. It wasn't the classiest place, but part of him relaxed now that he'd found a relatively safe place to stay while he tried to figure out what to do next.

  **

  Geoffrey was shaking again, but more violently than before, violently enough that his feet were making noise against the floor. He needed to be quiet. He couldn't remember why, but he was pretty sure that was important.

  The lights were still on, but for some reason Geoffrey was having a hard time seeing. Everything was inexplicably blurry, and he seemed unable to remember how long he'd been hiding in the near darkness. Hours? Days? He couldn't remember, but he knew he needed to stay down where it was safe until everyone stopped looking for him.

  The sound of feet dragging somewhere nearby confirmed Geoffrey's worry that the noise he was making would draw unwelcome attention, but the thought was too listless to generate any force.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  The voice was strangely clear, the sound apparently unaffected by whatever was interfering with Geoffrey's other senses. He tried again, but couldn't decide where the voice was coming from.

  "I asked you a question, man."

  The raw anger in the voice demanded a response. Geoffrey somehow managed to move his head slowly from side to side until a dark, fuzzy mass appeared in his field of vision.

  Geoffrey opened his mouth to respond, but rough hands interrupted his train of thought as they pulled him to his feet. His efforts to help the hands were surprisingly ineffectual, and Geoffrey found himself slightly displeased by the weak way in which his legs flailed at the floor.

  "How does a yuppie addict like you get down here?"

  The hands shook Geoffrey, but he was oddly drawn to them. They gave off a warming heat, while at the same time singing a slow, two-note song.

  Somehow the words penetrated the haze, and the slightest bit of anger kindled in the back of Geoffrey's mind. Who was this guy to accuse him like that? He'd never used any drugs…except he didn't really know that. He didn't really know anything. The anger started to fade, replaced by a growing sense that things weren't right.

  Geoffrey pushed against the fuzziness surrounding his thoughts. He was thinking clearly enough now to try and free himself, but not clearly enough to actually succeed. Vague thoughts of breaking the man's arm floated through his mind, but he was too weak. He was hardly able to raise his arms let alone exert enough violent force to actually win free.

  The rough grip suddenly pulled Geoffrey closer so that the dark form took up nearly his whole field of vision.

  "It don't matter how you made it down here. What matters is that you, your wallet, and your fancy clothes won't be making it back up to the surface."

  The hands holding Geoffrey shifted to his neck, and clamped down with incredible power.

  Unable to breathe, Geoffrey tried to shake off the weights that seemed to be slowing his thoughts, but nearly his full attention was drawn to the hot breath that teased at his face as his attacker leaned in to better watch him die.

  The throbbing was louder now, just beyond reach as it called to Geoffrey, resonating with a hunger that he hadn't noticed before that instant.

  The blurry tunnel that was one of Geoffrey's last ties to the physical world was shrinking rapidly, but then his arms darted out with the strength that had been eluding him. A sharp pain flashed across Geoffrey's forehead, and then he was falling as if in slow motion, drawing his first breath in far too long.

  That lone breath was forced out of Geoffrey's chest as he landed, crushing something lumpy beneath his weight. The drumming was still seductively calling for Geoffrey, now faster than before. Something warm splashed across his face before his mouth captured the flow, directing it down into his bruised body.

  As blackness returned to claim Geoffrey, the drumming grew quieter and he felt an irrational anger that it would desert him.

  **

  Geoffrey looked up into a pair of soft brown eyes and a wave of pure contentment flowed through him. The eyes belonged to a gentle face that was smiling at him from behind a thin veil of long, dark hair.

  Geoffrey smiled back, content with his full stomach and the heat of the wood fire reaching out from behind to envelop him in warmth.

  Somehow, Geoffrey's point of view changed, leaving him standing in the other corner of the still-indistinct room. A sound, which Geoffrey knew existed even though he couldn't hear it, brought his head around enough to see a familiar figure setting places at a rough wooden table. Another silent sound, one that seemed to issue from Geoffrey, caused the lithe figure to turn, revealing the same beautiful face that Geoffrey had smiled at just moments before.

  It wasn't until Geoffrey had taken a few steps toward the girl that he saw how she'd changed in those brief minutes, growing taller and losing the childish roundness that had graced her face previously.

  With a mischievous grin, the girl walked across the small room to meet Geoffrey halfway, reaching into the pocket of her apron to fish out a small, dark object that he'd been wanting for hours.

  The scene started to fade as the room trembled and shook. Geoffrey rolled over in an attempt to distance himself from the source of the noise pulling him away from the warm room, but an abrupt collision completed the unwanted transition into wakefulness.

  It had felt too real to be nothing more than a dream. He'd almost expected to be able to open his eyes and see her standing there again.

  For a brief moment, Geoffrey felt an intense hatred for Imastious. Anger over never being able to have a normal life momentarily peaked and then faded away. Geoffrey opened his eyes to surroundings much different than the modest apartment he'd been expecting.

  Looking at the filth-covered room quickly brought back the vague, almost dreamlike memories of being attacked, as well as the spray of warmth that had splashed across his face. Geoffrey suddenly felt sick as he noticed the stiff, crusty feeling covering his face and neck.

  A shaking hand came back dotted with a fine dusting of dried blood, and Geoffrey nearly vomited. He couldn't deny it anymore. He'd been drinking blood, just like he'd wanted to do for days. He didn't just kill people; he also got some kind of sick thrill from draining them dry.

  The knowledge that he was just as bad as Venice and Imastious had implied tore at Geoffrey's mind, leaving no room for rational thought, no room for anything more than the need to get away. Geoffrey stumbled back into the darkness, chased by the knowledge that this murder was undeniably his fault.

  **

  Geoffrey had been moving for hours, stopping only long enough to clean the worst of the blood off before quartering the city in an effort to find something. He didn't know what he was looking for, but this was the same kind of pull he'd experienced just before he'd walked into that church the night of the funeral.

  Geoffrey briefly considered visiting the priest, but after what he'd done, shied away from the thought of trying to meet the gaze of someone so completely good.

  It wasn't until after Geoffrey had traveled all the way to the tip of the island and back that he felt a distinct tug which ga
ve him a definite direction in which to head. Some fifteen minutes later Geoffrey found himself before a large cathedral.

  Walking up to the front doors, Geoffrey found a sign labeling the building the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. It was hard to imagine a church more different than the last one he'd entered, but something was definitely drawing him to churches. Geoffrey already felt nearly as safe as he'd felt the night of the funeral.

  Geoffrey was calmer now, but the thought of what he'd done just a few hours before was enough to stop him from talking to anyone, let alone seeking out a priest. Instead, he slipped around one of the velvet cordons meant to discourage visitors from exploring the less public areas of the church and quietly made his way down a set of stairs that led to the basement areas.

  It felt right to be there in the church, but a corner of his mind kept telling him that the rightness was somehow unnatural. He shouldn't feel good about being in a church, not after what he'd done.

  Wandering through the complex of infrequently used, but still richly furnished rooms, Geoffrey finally found a dark corner where he'd be safe, and the nagging voice telling him this wasn't right slowly faded away.

  Exhaustion washed over Geoffrey almost as soon as he stopped moving, but even after sitting down with his back to the wall, sleep proved elusive. His mind, no longer fixated on pursuing the need that had brought him here, filled with an incredible array of thoughts.

  What had happened to him in the subway? It was like time had stopped, and then he'd awakened weak, and unable to control himself. No, that wasn't right. He could have controlled himself. He'd killed because he was weak, not because he'd really needed to satiate some unnatural hunger. Trying to believe anything else was just a lie designed to help him shirk his guilt.

  As Geoffrey's eyes once again grew heavy, his thoughts settled down, returning to one series of questions. Why did everything else he'd just gone through somehow seem less important than his dream? How could a dream be so tangible, and if it was somehow real, who had the girl been?

  Chapter 5

  The pain that shocked Geoffrey awake shouldn't have come as such a surprise. Somehow he'd expected that falling asleep at a church would equate to waking in equally peaceful circumstances. Instead he was back in his apartment, stretched out on a metal frame with an incredibly strong electrical current running through him.